Copypaste from the news archive:
Quote:Issue 21 - MARTy
Posted On September 12 2011
As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure that City of Heroes remains an environment where everyone enjoys a safe and fun online experience we will be introducing a new anti exploit detection measure in Issue 21. We'd like to take a few moments of your time to answer some questions about this new system, MARTy.
What is MARTy?
MARTy stands for Metric Activated Reward Throttle (Y? Because exploits are bad!)
What is the goal of MARTy?
The primary purpose of MARTy is to automatically detect and prevent exploitative behavior by constantly analyzing the rate at which players gain rewards in game. This applies to many different rewards such as INF and Experience.
A secondary goal is to throttle only the worst offenders; those who exhibit truly exploitive behavior that ruins the game for everyone. If you trigger MARTy you are going to know that you are doing something abnormal and exploitive.
Will MARTy affect my gameplay?
The system runs entirely in the background on the game server and will have no impact on your in game experience.
Is MARTy installed on my computer?
No. MARTy is a server side function.
What about things that augment how quickly I gain Experience, such as XP Boosts or Patrol XP Benefits?
MARTy is aware of and takes into account all of these systems.
How fast is too fast for MARTy?
While we won't reveal the exact formula behind what makes MARTy tick, any one of the following circumstances would qualify as "too fast":
Simultaneously defeating every, single enemy in Perez Park.
Simultaneously one-shotting the entire Freedom Phalanx, Arachnos Patrons *and* Praetors.
How will players know that they've triggered MARTy?
If a player's actions have triggered MARTy they will stop receiving rewards for a variable amount of time. Additionally, a log of the player's activity is recorded for review.
It is important to note that MARTy is not aimed at one specific playstyle or Mission type. The threshold at which MARTy is triggered is such that, through normal, or even aggressive, gameplay, a player should never be impacted by any penalties. We have been vigorously testing MARTy against live server and Beta server metrics and have ensured that even the most aggressive normal gameplay will not be impacted. We will, of course, continuously monitor this new anti exploit measure to ensure that it is effectively performing its task.
Thanks for your continued support!